It’s not only going to be a big payday for the lucky Powerball Lottery player who purchased a $1 million winning quick pick ticket at Bart’s Supermarket, but for the grocery store as well.

“We get $10,000 just for selling the ticket,” raved store manager Rocky Patel Thursday. “We will use the money to pay bills,” added Patel, who manages the Flanagan store for a cousin.

The ticket holder, who matched all five winning numbers, 5, 16, 22, 23, 29, but not the Powerball number, 6, drawn Wednesday night, has not come forward.

Patel stated he had a lot of customers come into the store Wednesday prior to the drawing as the jackpot continued to rise to a near-record level of $587.5 million. Two winning tickets matching all six numbers, one sold in Missouri and the other in Arizona, will split a cash payout of about $385 million.

“We were very busy and sold a lot of tickets, and I cannot say who bought the ticket,” said Patel. He added that even if he did know, he could not reveal the winner because of confidentiality rules.

The grocery store is situated in a small, rural community along Illinois Route 116 and the ticket holder could easily be a traveler passing through as much as an area resident.

Mike Lang, an Illinois Lottery official in Springfield, said after federal and state withholding, 25 and 5 percent, respectively, the $1 million winner would walk away with $700,000.

A second $1 million ticket was sold at a Casey’s General Store in Fairmount, which is a small community between Champaign and Danville.

“We’re just so happy here, we’ve heard from a lot of customers,” Patel added.

Lang stated that $17.9 million in lottery tickets were sold in Illinois on Wednesday alone.

“This jackpot has been building since early October,” Lang noted. “During this long run, there have been five $1 million winners, one $40,000 winner and 51 $10,000 winners. In Illinois there have been 800,000 winning tickets sold.”

Lang said once the two Illinois $1 million winners come forward it would take another three to four weeks to process their winnings.

“But we have already validated where winning tickets were purchased, so those establishments do not have to wait until winners come forward,” he said.

Because of the large cash amounts, the big winners will have to bring the tickets to the Springfield office for validation and payout.

“The tickets have to be signed on the back and I encourage people to sign the back of the tickets as soon as they are purchased. You never know,” he added with a laugh.

The Missouri winner has presented the winning lottery ticket and a press conference is scheduled for today. That ticket was sold at a gas station in Dearborn, Mo., just off Interstate 29, the highway linking Kansas City to the Canadian border.

Page 2 of 2 - The Arizona ticket was sold at a convenience store in suburban Phoenix.

The $587.5 million payout represents the second-largest jackpot in U.S. history.

On Wednesday, tickets sold at a rate of 130,000 a minute nationwide — about six times the volume from a week ago. That pushed the jackpot even higher, said Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Multi-State Lottery Association. The jackpot rolled over 16 consecutive times without a winner. Powerball is played in 44 lottery jurisdictions across the country with drawings on Wednesday and Saturday evenings.

In a Mega Millions drawing in March, three ticket buyers shared a $656 million jackpot, with Illinoisan Merle Butler from Red Bud winning a third of the prize – nearly $219 million. This remains the largest lottery payout of all time.